A feast for the eyes: watch 7 films about food

We’ve got a delectable and exquisite selection of films about food for you this week on NFB.ca. But be warned: if you watch these while hungry, you’ll go nuts (pun intended). So fix yourself a snack, get comfy, and hit play.

A mysterious delight

First up: the world’s most important secret is finally revealed. How do they get the centres into chocolates? Find out in this revealing step-by-step tour through a chocolate factory. 19th century lawyer and poet John Godfrey Saxe once said that “laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” But I can guarantee you this won’t be the case with your beloved chocolates. Indeed, you’ll have greater respect for the mighty cocoa product than you ever did!

This film is part of a series of films that reveal how things are made. Still feeling snacky after that tour through the world of chocolate? Check out how chips and oatmeal cookies are made.

A world of food

Can’t afford a fancy vacation right now? Take a culinary tour of the world’s cultures and traditions without even leaving your house. Hold the Ketchup is a hilarious send-up of the incomparable deliciousness of new Canadians’ traditional foods. A boring piece of white bread is doused in ketchup to highlight the unimaginative nature of traditional North American fare, while Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Ukrainian newcomers to Canada are cooking up a mouth-watering storm of flavour and colour in their kitchens:

For another international culinary tour, check out the delightful short animation Roses Sing on NewSnow, in which a young girl named Maylin is the secret weapon in her father’s critically-acclaimed Chinese restaurant. But will Maylin’s behind-the-scenes role as master chef ever receive the accolades it deserves? When an important diplomat visits the restaurant, he demands to know how the culinary delights are made, and Maylin must find a way to seize her moment in the spotlight.

Cheese expertise, please

Sure, the equipment, ingredients, and recipe are all there. But is there some extra power in the spirituality and solitude in which the monks of a Winnipeg cheese-making abbey are ensconced? In A Monk’s Secret, we are introduced to Brother Albéric and his team of faithful cheese-producers as they continue the centuries-old tradition of making the famous Oka cheese, originally developed by the Trappists in Oka, Quebec. The delicate handling of the cheese during the aging process is explored in detail, while the monks ruminate on their spiritual life and its relationship to the world-class delicacy they produce. Bon Appétit!

The birth of the granola lifestyle

They may be ubiquitous nowadays, but there was a time when the natural food shop was an oddity in a neighbourhood otherwise filled with butchers and bakers. In the 1970s, a Montreal ad man-turned-shopkeeper opened the Sunny Munchy Crunchy Natural Food Shop, and encouraged customers to try products like soya butter, avocado hand creme, and wild honey hair aid. His slogan—”It’s later than you think”—is appropriately apocalyptic yet amusing.

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